We were with friends until after the bells this morning, so the first day of the new year has been a quiet one.  We never really get to sleep in late, as there is always something needing our attention first thing in the morning, especially the hens.  So after making sure they were fine and the fires were lit, I spent a lot of this morning knitting my current project which is Snawheid, another pattern by Kate Davies.  Progress has been made.  It is some years since I did stranded knitting, and I'm enjoying getting back into it.  Sadly I think the finished hat will be too small for me, but that is not any fault of either the pattern or the knitting, simply the fault of my own heid which is far too big!  I remember always having the largest school hat too, so I shouldn't really be surprised and had I thought to actually measure my head before beginning the pattern I would have thought to add in another pattern repeat, making it slightly larger.  However this will do as another sample for the stand at shows.



The wool I am using is 100% pure bluefaced leicester, and I have a range of colours in 50g hanks.  I'll be adding a couple more shades once I get back to the dyeshed later this week.  I've used Poppy and Ecru for my version of the hat.  As usual I'm not 100% satisfied with my knitting, and I'm not sure about the rib used in the pattern - it doesn't look very even to me, so I'm not sure if I did something wrong or if it is meant to look like that.  Again, it may look better once blocked.

After a restorative lunch we set off for a short walk while there was a gap in the weather.  Peggy had great fun rolling in the heather, one of her favourite aspects of walking in the hills:



We went to our nearest and favourite loch, Lexie's Loch, and it was looking stunning today in the cold, but thankfully now calmer, weather:



Stevan and Peggy decided to follow the (in my view crazy) tradition of taking a dip on New Year's Day but Stevan kept all his warm clothes and his wellies on - sensible boy!  Lexie and I took the easy option of just watching:



It takes some concentration on Peggy's part as she tried to pick her way over the stones under the water so she didn't have to get too wet.  You can see the tongue stuck out - a sure sign of concentration:



What did you do on this, the first day of the new year?